Help:Editing
See also & '' Meta Collab is a WikiWiki, which means that anyone can easily edit any unprotected page and have those changes posted immediately. '''Editing' a Wiki page is very easy. Simply click on the "edit" tab at the top (or the edit link on the right or bottom) of a Wiki page. This will bring you to a page with a text box containing the editable text of that page. If you just want to experiment, please do so in the ' instead of on other pages. Alternatively, you can press the "Show preview" button instead of actually saving the page. You should write a brief edit summary in the small field below the edit-box. You may use shorthand to describe your changes , as described in the , and when you have finished, press "show preview" to see how your changes will look. You can also see what changes you have made in comparison to the previous version by pressing the "Show changes" button. If you're happy with what you see, then press "Save" and your changes will be immediately applied to the article. Don't sign edits you make to regular articles (the software keeps track of who makes every change). You can also click on the "'Discussion" tab to see the corresponding talk page, which contains comments about the page from other Wikipedia users. Click on the "+'" tab to add a new section, or edit the page in the same way as an article page. When editing talk pages, please sign your change by leaving four tildes (~~~~). Tips on editing MetaCollab articles Cite your sources so others can check and extend your work. You can either use in-text citation in academic form such as (Example, 2004, pp 22-23) or as a superscript to put a footnote at the end of an article by typing this: your text1 which will give you this: your text1 After making a new page, it's a good idea to: *use ''What links here (with your page displayed) to check the articles that already link to it, and make sure that they are all expecting the same meaning that you have supplied; and *use the Search button to search MetaCollab for your topic title—and possible variants—to find articles that mention it, and make links from them if appropriate. Minor edits When editing a page, a logged-in user can mark that edit as being "minor". Minor edits generally mean spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearrangement of text. It is possible to hide minor edits when viewing Recent Changes. Marking a significant change as a minor edit is considered bad behavior, and even more so if it involves the deletion of some text. If one has accidentally marked an edit as minor, the person should edit the source once more, mark it major (or, rather, ensure that the check-box for "This is a minor edit" is not checked), and, in the summary, state that the previous change was a major one. Major edits All editors are encouraged to be bold, but there are several things that a user can do to ensure that major edits are performed smoothly. Before engaging in a major edit, consider discussing proposed changes on the article discussion/talk page. During the edit, if doing so over an extended period of time, the inuse tag (type: can reduce the likelihood of an edit conflict. Once the edit has been completed, the inclusion of an edit summary will assist in documenting the changes. These steps will all help to ensure that major edits are well received by the Metacollab community. Wiki markup The '''wiki markup is the syntax system you can use to format a MetaCollab page. In the left column of the table below, you can see what effects are possible. In the right column, you can see how those effects were achieved. In other words, to make text look like it looks in the left column, type it in the format you see in the right column. You may want to keep this page open in a separate browser window for reference, or take a screen-shot of it. If you want to try out things without danger of doing any harm, you can do so in the '''. Try opening the Sandbox in a separate window or tab and keeping this page open for reference. ---- Links and URLs Images Only images that have been uploaded to Wikipedia can be used. To upload images, use the . You can find the uploaded image on the . See the Wikipedia's image use policy as a guideline used on Wikipedia. For further help on images, including some more versatile abilities, see the topic on Extended image syntax. Character formatting Table of contents At the current status of the wiki markup language, having at least four headers on a page triggers the TOC to appear in front of the first header (or after introductory sections). Putting __TOC__ anywhere forces the TOC to appear at that point (instead of just before the first header). Putting anywhere forces the TOC to disappear. Compact TOC Where you have a large number of very short headings (such as letters of the alphabet) you can get a very long table of contents. An alternative is a '''compact table of contents, which you can achieve by inserting the following text: which looks like this: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z You can do similar things with years or decades, for example: 1900s - 1910s - 1920s - 1930s - 1940s - 1950s - 1960s - 1970s - 1980s - 1990s - 2000s Both of the above make use of section linking (see below). Tables There are two ways to build tables: *in special Wiki-markup (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Table) *with the usual HTML elements: , , or . For the latter, and a discussion on when tables are appropriate, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_use_tables. Variables (See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Variable) NUMBEROFARTICLES is the number of pages in the main namespace which contain a link and are not a redirect--in other words, it is the number of articles, stubs containing a link, and disambiguation pages. CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN is the genitive (possessive) grammatical form of the month name, as used in some languages; CURRENTMONTHNAME is the nominative (subject) form, as usually seen in English. In languages where it makes a difference, you can use constructs like to convert a word from the nominative case to some other case. For example, }} means the same as . Templates The MediaWiki software used by MetaCollab has support for templates. This means standardized text chunks can be inserted into articles. For example, typing will appear as "This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." when the page is saved. For many examples, see Wikipedia's list of templates or MetaCollab's list. Hiding the edit links Insert __NOEDITSECTION__ into the document to suppress the edit links that appear next to every section header. Category:Help